Sunday supper of beef and ale casserole

A casserole on a chilly day seems like proper home cooking. I think I've blogged about this one before too - it's a really nice recipe from the Waitrose website, with a bottle of Timothy Taylor's ale and balsamic vinegar. I add mushrooms, sometimes use whole shallots instead of onions and thicken the sauce with some extra flour if I feel like it. Last time I made it I used the gloriously thick Belazu balsamic vinegar (the food of the Gods - it's expensive but worth every penny - it's just sublime drizzled over a tomato salad) and it didn't work as well as before, when I used a cheap one, so I specifically bought a horrible, thin Balsamic vinegar from Sainsbury's purely for cooking purposes. This seemed to give a better result.

I left the casserole doing its stuff in the oven for a good 2 hours, and served it with lightly mashed new potatoes with garlic and olive oil, carrots and broccoli. It was lovely, and we ate less than half of it so there's loads in a pot in the freezer for another day. I was pleased - I'd bought Sainsbury's be good to yourself casserole steak with a little trepidation (I made a spag bol with their BGTY mince once and it was horrible, grisly and flavourless) but it was beautifully tender and tasty.

Last night's supper...

Was a triumph for a cook with no time, if I say so myself. I was knackered when I came in, but had to go and play netball, so I put the oven on to just under 200 degrees centigrade, stabbed a skewer through two big baking potatoes, shoved them on the middle shelf of the oven, then went out.

An hour and a half later I came home to a delicious smell wafting through the hall outside my flat (sorry, neighbours if you came in hungry too). I went to the freezer and took out a tub labelled 'Beef and Ale casserole 24/09/06'. Ooohh, nice - please excuse the way I'm bigging up my own domestic goddess prowess, but I'm more used to peering at frozen meals I've cooked weeks before, wondering whether they're meatballs in a tomato sauce, chicken curry or some veg concoction, and worrying how long they've been stuck at the bottom of my freezer, then nuking them in the microwave and hoping I'm cooking the right accompaniments. But anyway, I love having home-cooked meals ready and waiting in the freezer. It took about 12 minutes in the microwave (2 stirs in the middle) for me to be sure it was piping hot throughout, then I left it to stand and shoved some leftover sweetcorn in the microwave too for a couple of minutes. I took the crispy (yet fluffy inside) potatoes out of the oven and, lo and behold, we had a warm, home-cooked, nutritious and tasty meal all ready in 15 minutes. Plus the potato cooking time, of course. Very satisfying.